The tropical acacia tree has hollow thorns, nectar and protein-producing leaves. All perfect for the stinging ants that live inside the thorns and eat the nectar and the leaves.
And what's in it for the tree? The ants keep birds and other pests away, as well as killing off small shoots that might grow into competitive trees (ht: Jerry Coyne).
The ecosystem combines two elements that can't live without one another. Each produces something the other needs.
Too often, businesses (and freelancers) focus on making it on their own. In fact, the secret of being indispensable is making it together.
The below linked article in the 2 October 2010 edition of the New York Times [Attachment 1] is a good example of the pro-Israeli bias in the US mainstream media when it comes to portraying Israel's relations with the Palestinians.
Note the paragraph I marked in bold which says unequivocally that “Israel halted most settlement construction for 10 months last November …” This statement is clearly central to the reader's understanding of the questions of whether or not Israel has been negotiating with good will and who is responsible for the crisis in the peace talks. It is also outrageously wrong, and that crucial fact was known at least five days before it was written. That this is indisputably true can be seen in Attachment 2 beneath it, a 28 September 2010 report in Ha'aretz, perhaps Israel's most prestigious newpaper — ironically, Ha'aretz is often referred as the New York Times of Israel. Ha'aretz tells the reader that the Israeli government's own official statistics show that the settlement freeze was barely a slowdown.
There is no way the author of the NYT report, Ethan Bonner, the senior New York Times reporter based in Israel, could have been unaware of the Ha'aretz report, and his (or his editor's) countenancing such an unequivocal statement, without at least a caveat, can only be construed to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader with respect to the nature of the settlement freeze, and by extension, the good will in Israel's negotiating stance vis a vis that of the Palestinians. His biased outlook becomes transparently clear when one compares the tone and context to the two reports.
To those readers, who think I am nitpicking, I would urge them to think about the wisdom embodied in the following two quotes: The first is by James Madison, the father of the US Constitution, describing the importance of popular information to effective functioning of a representative democracy. The second is Edward Gibbon's assessment of how ignorance and fanaticism sapped the cognitive faculties of the Roman peoople:
“A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison, from a letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822
”Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.” – Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian leadership said Saturday that four-week-old direct talks with Israel should be suspended if Jewish settlement construction resumed in the West Bank. It called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop the building but withheld a final decision on the talks until an Arab League meeting on Friday.
What took place in the past few months is, in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements.
By Dror Etkes, Ha’aretz, 28 Sept 2010
The official statistics supplied by the Central Bureau of Statistics describe the story behind the 10-month construction moratorium in the West Bank. The story can be called many things but “freeze” is certainly not one of them. What took place in the past few months is, in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements.
Phi Beta Iota: Apart from facts in isolation, context matters. The Israeli settlements are unsustainabile in relation to available water and the continuing atrocities against the Palestinian people on their own land is an ongoing crime against humanity that is easily, in today's context, as terrible as the Holocaust was in Hitler's time. None of this has entered the human consciousness of the US public because their leaders lack integrity, as do the corporate media led by the New York Times.
NPR: The Intelligence Of Crowds In ‘The Perfect Swarm' Talk of the Nation (Sept 10)
In his book The Perfect Swarm, Len Fisher talks about swarm intelligence — where the collective ideas of a group add up to better solutions than any individual could have dreamed up, including an example of how UPS reorganized its driving routes using the logic of an ant colony.
NPR: Collaboration Beats Smarts In Group Problem Solving by Joe Palca (Sept 30)
Everywhere you look, from business to science to government, teams of people are set to work solving problems. You might think the trick to getting the smartest team would be to get the smartest people together, but a new study says that might not always be right.
The 2010 Right Livelihood Awards go to four recipients who will share the € 200.000 cash award:
NNIMMO BASSEY (Nigeria) receives an Award “for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally”.
Bishop ERWIN KRÄUTLER (Brazil) is honoured “for a lifetime of work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and for his tireless efforts to save the Amazon forest from destruction”.
SHRIKRISHNA UPADHYAY and the organisation SAPPROS (Nepal) are recognised “for demonstrating over many years the power of community mobilisation to address the multiple causes of poverty even when threatened by political violence and instability”.
The organisation PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-ISRAEL (Israel) is awarded “for their indomitable spirit in working for the right to health for all people in Israel and Palestine”.
QuoteJakob von Uexkull, Founder and Co-Chair of the Right Livelihood Awards, noted after the jury decision:
“True change starts at the grassroots level: physicians who did not wait for politicians before acting to end unnecessary suffering in the Middle East; villagers who work themselves out of poverty; and environmental movements which unite the victims of ecological devastation. Combine this work on the ground with targeted advocacy, for example for the constitutional rights of indigenous people, and you understand why this year’s Right Livelihood Award Laureates yet again offer role models, whose work and commitment can be replicated throughout the world.”
I held a bi-partisan vote today, with me representing the Democratic Party while I represented the Republican Party. Strict ballot access controls ensured a unanimous outcome — the new Virtual President of the United States of America is Robert David Steele, or for Latinos, Roberto David de Steele y Vivas.
Over the next 45 days, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will announce one critical policy decision, always in the context of a balanced budget and always with the public interest in mind — this is not going to be pretty, but 45 days from today, every American will be able to compare my virtual track record with the actual track record of those seeking re-election, or in the case of a tiny handful that overcame enormous obstacles, those seeking election for the first time.
Phi Beta Iota: Steele's posts will be buried among 5,999 other bloggers posting twice weekly. The search bar at Huffington Post works well. You can also, if you wish, click on the fan logo at this first point, to automatically receive an email alert with the exact URL for each additional post as it appears.
Early in the book you tell the story of how your own perspective on engaging emergence began. Tell us about that experience?
In the 1990′s I managed software projects. I was excellent at figuring out the steps that needed to be done and then making those steps happen — planning the work and then working the plan.
As the projects got bigger and more complex, I ran into a one that involved enough people with different opinions that that old approach just didn’t cut it.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with someone who understood how to work in a different way. Once I experienced it, I had to learn more.
….in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.
With that in mind, I compiled a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life. These are the post-bureaucratic realities that tomorrow’s employees will use as yardsticks in determining whether your company is “with it” or “past it.” In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, only those that are most at odds with the legacy practices found in large companies.
1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and self-organizing
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.
Phi Beta Iota: We've been skirting all of these since 1988, and even more so since we opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994. Please do read the full articulation, and pass it on. It's is the single best summary we have found to date.
